The present disclosure relates to oil and gas exploration and production, and more particularly to systems and methods for characterization of natural and hydraulic fractures and stress using layer thickness variation over an azimuthally anisotropic medium.
In order to study and understand the complex Earth, exploration geophysicists make many assumptions. One of them is that the earth is perfectly isotropic when it is fundamentally anisotropic. Anisotropy is the property of being directionally dependent. In other words, various layers of the Earth exhibit properties with different values when measured in different directions or azimuths. Azimuthal seismic anisotropy can be caused by different factors such as regional stress, rock fabric and vertical fractures. Commonly, a combination of above factors causes azimuthal anisotropy, making it a challenging problem for fracture and geomechanics applications.